GUNS Magazine December 1955 - Jeffersonian's Home Page

Skillful craftsmen of Browning factory in Belgium wouldbe surprised by crudeness of copies of automatics.Three similar pistols bearing identical serial numbersdemonstrate boldness of sharpers in copying Browning.however, and well made, and it managed to shoot and continueshooting under a number of adverse conditions. Theoriginal makers, the Fabrique National arms factoryin Liege, Belgium, turned out many hundreds of thousandsof these pistols and it was this model in .32 automatic caliberwhich made the French dictionaries include the word"browning" as a common noun for "pistolet automatique."World-wide sales of the Model 1900 Brown found it "athome" in the desk drawer of a French businessman, thebelt holster of a Chinese warlord, and even in the hands ofa wild-eyed Serbian student who used a Model 1900 Browningto end the life of Archduke Francis Ferdinand ofAustria and so bring on the gathering storm of World War 1.Such popularity evidently could not be enjoyed by theModel 1900 Browning without imitation, and soon some"cousins" began to stagger in from the far hills. Theylooked close enough to the Browning so that the casualcustomer was put to it to tell the genuine from the fake.One American collector recently got quite a surprise fromthe habit of foreign gunsmiths imitating the Model 1900Browning. He was Frank Wheeler of Osborne, Kansas, agent with a yen for odd-ball pistols. Some 170 pistols gracethe walls and cabinets of Frank's home, and among themare three pistols that really have the boys scratching theirheads. All three guns are copies of the Model 1900 Browning.All three appear to be copies (Continued on page 46)Enlargements of serial numbers in Browning imitations shows similar number stamping in some figures, suggests one singlehandyman may have made all pistols after one genuine Browning pistol which bore serial number of #126063.36